social issues

on websites:

Low status jobs: for ‘failures and foreigners’ only?

In tonight’s Analysis programme I investigate two related issues about low skilled jobs. How, on the one hand, these ‘bad jobs’ have not disappeared in Britain, as many economists predicted they would, and yet, on the other hand, how so many British people have been discouraged from taking them. 

Demos | Blogs

Making the Best of a Bad Job

AVAILABILITY: EVEN IN A KNOWLEDGE-BASED ECONOMY, THE MOST BASIC JOBS SURVIVE. OFFICES STILL NEED TO BE CLEANED, SUPERMARKET SHELVES STACKED, AND CARE HOME RESIDENTS LOOKED AFTER.DAVID GOODHART CONSIDERS WHETHER THE DECLINING STATUS OF BASIC JOBS CAN BE HALTED AND EVEN REVERSED.SUCCESSIVE GOVERNMENTS HAVE PRIORITISED WIDENING ACCESS TO HIGHER EDUCATION TO TRY TO DRIVE SOCIAL MOBILITY, WITHOUT GIVING MUCH THOUGHT TO THE IMPACT THIS HAS ON THE EXPECTATIONS OF YOUNG PEOPLE WHO, FOR WHATEVER REASON, ARE NOT GOING TO TAKE THAT PATH.BUT EVEN IN A KNOWLEDGE-BASED ECONOMY, THE MOST BASIC JOBS SURVIVE. OFFICES STILL NEED TO BE CLEANED, SUPERMARKET SHELVES STACKED, AND CARE HOME RESIDENTS LOOKED AFTER.

David Goodhart considers whether the declining status of basic jobs can be halted and even reversed.

Successive governments have prioritised widening access to higher education to try to drive social mobility, without giving much thought to the impact this has on the expectations of young people who, for whatever reason, are not going to take that path.

But even in a knowledge-based economy, the most basic jobs survive. Offices still need to be cleaned, supermarket shelves stacked, and care home residents looked after.

The best employers know how to design these jobs to make them more satisfying. Are politicians finally waking up to the problem?

BBC Radio 4 - Analysis, Making the Best of a Bad Job
downloads.bbc.co.uk/radio4/transcripts/20130220-analysis-bad-jobs.pdf

The Sutton Trust
The main objective of the Sutton Trust is to improve educational opportunities for young people from non-privileged backgrounds and increase social mobility.
The Sutton Trust - Sutton Trust

Men for Tomorrow
There are growing signs in Britain today of men failing to contribute adequately to the communities they live in. In the UK, men have increasingly been seen as marginal to family life. Men for Tomorrow suspects that this may underly their growing failure to contribute adequately to the communities they live in. Family men make better citizens. MfT will carry out research to explore this, and produce social policy suggestions to alleviate current problems.
“It is widely understood that de-industrialisation and the reduction in jobs depending mainly on manual labour have increased male unemployment in recent decades. What is less appreciated is that this has been aggravated by rising levels of basic non-employability, absent fatherhood, crime and suicide; all of which can be seen as indicators of a lost generation of men.
Men for Tomorrow
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food issues

in the newspapers and beyond:

Anyone for horse-meat?



Horsemeat scandal: the essential guide | UK news | The Guardian
Horsemeat scandal: EU ministers want faster action on meat labelling | UK news | The Guardian

Or: How about eating all that's on your plate?




Almost half of the world's food thrown away, report finds | Environment | guardian.co.uk
Global food - Waste not, want not | Institution of Mechanical Engineers
BBC News - UK supermarkets reject 'wasted food' report claims
Learning English - Words in the News - Half of all food wasted
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the poetry of english

George Orwell, a modern master of the English Language



In the centenary of his birth, BBC Radio 4 is offering a generous Homage to George Orwell:

BBC Radio 4 - The Real George Orwell - Episode guide

Essays and Journalism Episode 1 of 5

A Hanging

Although most famous for his novels Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty Four, George Orwell was also a prolific essayist and journalist. A selection of Orwell's non-fiction writing begins with the powerful essay, A Hanging, Orwell's account of an execution that he attended while serving in the Indian Imperial Police in Burma during the 1920's: 'It is curious, but til that moment I had never realised what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man.'

First broadcast:

 

Monday 18 February 2013

BBC Radio 4 - The Real George Orwell, Essays and Journalism

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idle poetry

The Art of Idleness

Leisure
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad day light,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

WILLIAM HENRY DAVIES, Leisure

Embracing Idleness

BBC Radio 4: Saturday 16 February 2013

The writer, Oliver Burkeman, wanders through the archives, thinking about the pros and cons of idleness.
In these goal obsessed, triple-dip recession conscious days, the merest hint of idleness can send politicians and headline writers into a state of near apoplexy. Front-benchers from all political parties seem to be tripping over themselves in a bid to establish the supremacy of their moral devotion to the 'hard working families' and upstanding citizens of 'alarm clock Britain'.

Oliver Burkeman steps back from the fray to unravel the complications of idleness and even discover some of its merits. As a non-idler who confesses to that feeling of smugness at having achieved tasks before breakfast time, Oliver nonetheless questions whether our target driven culture can ever bring any sense of contentment or happiness. The crux of the conflict seems to be that although idleness may be the dream, we spend most of our lives actively rejecting it.

And so we admire, despise and envy the idler, all at once. Oliver consults a diverse range of characters from the archive to untangle some of the complications. These include Bagpuss, Rab C Nesbitt, Tony Hancock, Waynetta Slob and Ronald Reagan, who all help Oliver examine idleness and its relation to childhood, creativity, boredom, social class and subversion.

There are also wonderful insights from 'real people'. There's the testimony of a schoolboy from 1960s Birmingham, dreaming of the island life. Unbothered by the noise of everyday life (including The Queen chasing him for rates) he is able to compose opera by seeking inspiration from nature. A gloriously grand Colonel's wife flagrantly tells of her life of luxury, being fed and watered by her husband with bath time Brandy and Ginger Ales, iced coffees, only occasionally talking to the children through the intercom if she is particularly bored. Then there's the fisherman who believes that idleness and death go hand in hand and that the introduction of the Welfare State could only turn him into a sluggard. And there's the moving testimony of a former miner, who began work in the pits during his school holidays in 1925, and then paradoxically found the greatest moments of happiness and freedom during the months of idleness brought about by the General Strike.

Oliver also meets with the founder of The Idler magazine, Tom Hodgkinson, for a whistle stop history of idleness and the philosophical debate, to discover how the work ethic became so inculcated. Tom argues that at least part of the reason for this is because, by their very nature, pro-idlers are bound to be less zealous in spreading the idleness word.

There's also an appealing aside, when Oliver observes that in the right person, idleness and that special insouciance that can go with it, is simply 'cool'.
With fantastic music, enquiry, and laughter, join Oliver Burkeman, Embracing Idleness.

BBC Radio 4 - Archive on 4, Embracing Idleness

Idle Theory: Utilitarianism

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sport as poetry in motion... ?

Tell me the Truth about Sports



Dominic Hobson: Sport is a Zero Sum Game

Writer and entrepreneur Dominic Hobson argues that organised, competitive sport damages - rather than builds - the character of players and spectators alike. In common with war, Dominic condemns it as a zero sum game: what one side gains, the other loses: "Rich in triumphalism, disdain and pride". 
"I still recoil in horror from the behaviour of the parents, let alone the players, when my oldest son played for a youth football team in south London," he says. 

BBC Radio 4 - Four Thought, Series 2, Dominic Hobson: Sport is a Zero Sum Game

And a little more discussion:

Alan Watt The Truth About Sports - YouTube
Alan Watt - The Truth About Sports - YouTube

Charlie Brooker: Why idolise footballers? It's like living in a world where half of us worship shire horses | Comment is free | The Guardian

Noam Chomsky on the role of sports in propaganda-based authority - YouTube

HG Wells on sports arenas:

Manufactured Culture | Iron Ink

5 A.M. Psychology

The Futurist Dystopia of Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" | WilderUtopia.com

Metropolis hallucinates a futuristic city, a paradise of glass and steel, where underground workers toil endlessly at the giant machines that run the world above. Controlled by the autocratic industrialist, his spoilt son falls for the working class prophet who envisions some mediation between workers and managers. Noted science fiction author H. G. Wells reviews the controversial 1927 German expressionistic masterpiece, directed by Fritz Lang and written by his wife Thea Von Harbou: The film tells the story of a futuristic city, with magnificent skyscrapers traversed by biplanes and monorails, with beautiful gardens and sports stadiums. Yet this paradise of glass and steel is not for everyone. Hidden in the bowels of the city we see an image of hell, where workers toil endlessly at the giant machines that run the world above

Bread and circuses - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Orwell: "Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence."

prolefeed: the steady stream of mindless entertainment to distract and occupy the masses

Amusing Ourselves to Death - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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prose as poetry

Just So Science


2. How the Leopard Got His Spots

Episode 2 of 5

AVAILABILITY:

Vivienne Parry presents the science behind some of Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories, with wondrous tales of how things really came to be.

In Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories, we're told how the leopard got his spots, the camel his hump, the whale his throat and so forth. But what does science make of these lyrical tales? For the most part, just-so stories are to be dismissed as the antithesis of scientific reasoning. They're ad hoc fallacies, designed to explain-away a biological or behavioural trait, more akin to folklore than the laws of science. But on closer inspection, might Kipling's fantasies contain a grain of truth? And might the "truth" as science understands it, be even more fantastic than fiction?

In Just So Science, Vivienne Parry meets researchers whose work on some of Kipling's 'best beloved' creatures is helping us to answer a rather inconvenient question: how do traits evolve? Why are some animals the way they are?
Excerpts from five of the Just So Stories are read by Samuel West
2. How the Leopard Got His Spots. Chemist Andrea Sella and biologist Buzz Baum explain why a leopard could change its spots, thanks to mathematician Alan Turing.
Producer: Rami Tzabar.

First broadcast:

 

Tuesday 15 January 2013

BBC Radio 4 - Just So Science, 2. How the Leopard Got His Spots

And the original Just So Story:

How the Leopard Got His Spots - Rudyard Kipling

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poetry is ambiguous...

LOVE POETRY

from BBC Radio 4

For Valentine's week, the Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, explores the heady world of love poetry from first flush to final parting. She argues that love poems are the poems that continue to have the most profound and lasting impact on the general reader, and examines enduring images and themes across ages and cultures. In conversation with other love poets, Carol Ann celebrates the great poems of love and explores poets' responses to love's mysteries. Each of the five programmes in the series looks at a different stage in the development of a relationship. Today's episode focuses on the excitement of a first meeting and the headiness of early infatuation. Presented by Carol Ann Duffy.

BBC Radio 4 - Tell Me the Truth About Love, Episode 1

For the origin of the title:

O Tell Me The Truth About Love by WH Auden

Merciless Beauty By Geoffrey Chaucer

Your eyen two slay me suddenly;

    I may the beauty of them not sustain,

    So woundeth it throughout my hearte keen.

    And but your word will healen hastily

    My hearte’s wounde, while that it is green,

         Your eyen two will slay me suddenly;

         I may the beauty of them not sustain.

    Upon my truth I say you faithfully

    That ye bin of my life and death the queen;

    For with my death the truthe shall be seen.

         Your eyen two will slay me suddenly;

         I may the beauty of them not sustain.

         So woundeth it throughout my hearte keen.

Sappho 

He looks to me to be in heaven, that man who sits across from you and listens near you toy our soft speaking, your laughing lovely: that, I vow, makes the heart leap in my breast; for watching you a moment, speech fails me, my tongue is paralysed, at once a light fire runs beneath my skin, my eyes are blinded, and my ears drumming, the sweat pours down me, and I shake all over, sallower than grass: I feel as if I'm not far off dying. But no thing is too hard to bear. For God can make the poor man rich or bring to nothing heaven-high fortune.

D L Page (ed) Lyrica Graeca Selecta (1968), no.199 (translated by M L West).

And an interesting discussion:
he looks to me to be in heaven | Great Works of Literature Survey I

The First Day by Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894)

I wish I could remember the first day,

First hour, first moment of your meeting me;

If bright or dim the season, it might be

Summer or winter for aught I can say.

So unrecorded did it slip away,

So blind was I to see and to foresee,

So dull to mark the budding of my tree

That would not blossom yet for many a May.

If only I could recollect it! Such

A day of days! I let it come and go

As traceless as a thaw of bygone snow.

It seemed to mean so little, meant so much!

If only now I could recall that touch,

First touch of hand in hand! - Did one but know!

In Memory of Adrienne

21 Love Poems, By Adrienne Rich

XVII

    No one’s fated or doomed to love anyone.

    The accidents happen, we’re not heroines,

    they happen in our lives like car crashes,

    books that change us, neighborhoods

    we move into and come to love.

    Tristan und Isolde is scarcely the story,

    women at least should know the difference

    between love and death. No poison cup,

    no penance. Merely a notion that the tape-recorder

    should have caught some ghost of us: that tape-recorder

    not merely played but should have listened to us,

    and could instruct those after us:

    this we were, this is how we tried to love,

    and these are the forces they had ranged against us,

    and these are the forces we had ranged within us,

    within us and against us, against us and within us.

WHEN YOU ARE OLD: W.B. Yeats [1865-1939]

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire,take down this book,
And slowly read,and dream the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep.

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur a little sadly,how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
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